Day two: 1,850 licensing opportunities with 955 companies
BIO-Europe Spring® 2009 was in full swing on March 17 as 1,564 executives shifted into partnering high gear. The 233 meeting rooms reported 100 percent occupancy during the peak hour just after lunch. Before the day was over more than 3,500 one-to-one meetings took place.
The ground floor of the Milan Convention Centre was dedicated to pure partnering and viewed from above looked like a busy anthill. A chiming bell reminded participants the half-hour session was over, setting off a swirl of activity as executives shook hands and set off for their next meeting.
Where the first day of BIO-Europe Spring was dedicated to panel discussions and workshops on hot topics like personalized medicine, current market conditions, or regulatory updates, this second day of the conference was divided into 21 timeslots of 30 minutes when participants got down to the main business of partnering.
Twenty meeting rooms were reserved by sponsors for a fixed rendez-vous site with potential partners, leaving 213 rooms available for booking by delegates. A total of 7,104 meetings had been scheduled on EBD Group’s partneringONE™ software for BIO-Europe Spring as of noon on Day Two, with meeting requests still being confirmed using the online scheduling system.
While participation at this year’s event was up 15 percent over BIO-Europe Spring 2008 in Madrid, the level of partnering activity between life science executives was up by an astounding 21 percent here in Milan. This spike in meetings indicates a superb quality of licensing opportunities, and partnerships providing a vital route securing corporate funding.
EBD Group also reports that this year’s event features a high number of executives returning from last year who are experienced in using the online partneringONE software to schedule meetings.
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